German air taxi startup Volocopter raised €50 million ($55.3 million) in a funding round led by Geely, the Chinese parent company of Volvo Cars, the company announced. The new funds will be put toward achieving Volocopter’s goal of launching a commercial air taxi service powered by its 18-rotor electric aircraft “within the next three years.”

In addition to leading this series C funding round, Geely will also enter into a joint venture with Volocopter to bring the startup’s aircraft to China. Volocopter has conducted a handful of public demonstrations of its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, most recently at the airport in Helsinki.

Geely isn’t the only major company (or automaker) with interest in Volocopter. Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, invested $30 million in 2017. Soon after, Intel announced that it would be providing technical support to the German startup.

Volocopter’s ability to attract attention and cash from so many bold-faced names is notable because electric flight is extremely hard to do — some even would say impossible in a commercial sense. Flying requires an incredible amount of energy, and present battery technology just doesn’t offer the power-to-weight ratio needed to achieve liftoff. Most experts predict that it will be years, if not decades, before battery technology can catch up.

That’s probably why Volocopter envisions its aircraft operating only over short distances. Its 2X prototype — the one with 18 rotors — features a flight time of 30 minutes and a maximum range of 27 km (17 miles), though Volocopter says the batteries can be quickly swapped to compensate for those numbers until the tech improves.

Last month, Volocopter unveiled the VoloCity, the company’s fourth-generation eVTOL aircraft. The VoloCity has slightly better specs than the 2X, capable of an estimated range of 35 km (or roughly 22 miles) and an airspeed of 110 km/h (or about 68 mph). The company envisions a network of rooftop “Volo-ports” where up to 1,000 passengers could board and disembark their own personal “flying taxi” every hour. That translates to 10,000 passengers per station per day, the company claims.

With the latest round secure, Volocopter says it has raised €85 million ($94 million) to date. The company says it is in talks with investors about closing a fourth round by year’s end.

Earlier this week, Porsche released its first all-electric sports car, the Taycan, at an event that was simulcasted from three different locations around the world: Canada, Germany, and China. Leading up the announcement, the German automaker boasted that a prototype version of the Taycan “conquered” the legendary Nürburgring-Nordschleife racetrack in Germany with a record time of 7 minutes and 42 seconds.

While not really relevant to your average car buyer, beating the so-called “Green Hell” racetrack is nevertheless an important feather in Porsche’s cap as it seeks to market its new model as the fastest and most high-tech EV in its class.

In what I assume is completely unrelated news, Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday that Tesla will be taking a Model S to the famed Nürburgring next week. There’s no doubt that this timing is completely coincidental and has nothing to do with the release of another so-called “Tesla killer” that critics claim will put Musk’s company out of business.

To be sure, Tesla makes, dare I say, ludicrously fast cars. The performance version of the Model S boasts a 0–60 mph acceleration of 2.4 seconds, which is a hair faster than the 2.6 seconds that Porsche says its Taycan Turbo S takes to make a similar sprint. Whether Musk’s car can take the 12.9-mile (20.8 km) track faster than 7 minutes and 42 seconds, though, remains to be seen.

Musk was clearly watching the Taycan’s debut with a high degree of interest. In addition to his Nürburgring tweet, the Tesla CEO also tweaked Porsche for naming the two versions of the Taycan “Turbo” and “Turbo S.” (The car does not actually have a turbocharger.) Musk seems to be spoiling for a fight, and depending on how well the Model S performs in Germany next week, it looks like he’ll get one.

Updated September 6, 2019 2:56 pm ET: Tesla’s track run is now a little less certain. A spokesperson for the Nürburgring told Road & Track that it hasn’t received any request from the company, and may not be able to accommodate Tesla even if it had.

“Tesla did not send us a record request and did not rent an exclusive time slot.” The representative further said that the [Nürburgring-]Nordschleife is “fully booked through the season,” and added, “I think that there is no availability for Tesla to set up a record attempt in the next days.”

After announcing that t was coming at CES and showing us a beta version in late January, Ford is finally rolling out Waze integration with its SYNC 3 infotainment system. iOS users with a SYNC 3-equipped car will now be able to “project” or “mirror” Waze onto the infotainment system, giving them full access to Waze’s maps as well as all of the crowdsourced information about traffic, hazards, and police alerts that the app is known for.

To make it work, users need the Waze app and have to be on version 3.0 (or greater) of SYNC 3, with their phones running iOS 11.3 (or later). Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t run through CarPlay; Apple still wants you to use Apple Maps there. Instead, it runs on SYNC 3 via Ford’s AppLink, which is kind of like Ford’s own version of CarPlay.

Like with, say, CarPlay, the Waze app will still be running on your phone in this situation. But the mirrored version that shows up on the infotainment screen doesn’t feel any worse off because of this (at least based on what I saw when it was running in beta at the beginning of this year). The only issue I had when I fiddled with Waze back then was that the experience was a little buggy, which is not surprising for a beta.

Otherwise, the icons are big and colorful, the interface was simple to navigate, and it even works with voice controls. Bringing Waze to the bigger screen for iOS users — something Android Auto users have enjoyed for a while now — helps add more choices to the mix. It’s also another small part of the effort Ford’s making to try and elevate its tech-forward image. The company also announced a deeper integration with Amazon’s Alexa earlier this year. On the driving side, it recently unveiled its driver assistance package, which will debut on the 2019 Edge SUV.

Engineers inside Tesla wanted to add robust driver monitoring systems to the company’s cars to help make sure drivers safely use Autopilot, and Tesla even worked with suppliers on possible solutions, according to The Wall Street Journal. But those executives — Elon Musk included — reportedly rejected the idea out of worry that the options might not work well enough, could be expensive, and because drivers might become annoyed by an overly nagging system.

Tesla considered a few different types of monitoring: one that would track a driver’s eyes using a camera and infrared sensors, and another that involved adding more sensors to the steering wheel to make sure that the driver is holding on. Both ideas would help let the car’s system know if the driver has stopped paying attention, which could reduce the chance of an accident in situations where Autopilot disengages or is incapable of keeping the car from crashing.

Musk later confirmed on Twitter that the eye tracking option was “rejected for being ineffective, not for cost.”

While a name like “Autopilot” might suggest there aren’t situations a Tesla car can’t handle, accidents still happen even when Autopilot is engaged, and three people have died while using the feature. Tesla promises that Autopilot will one day be capable of fully driving the car itself, but the system currently more closely resembles the limited driver assistance packages offered by GM, Nissan, and others.

Tesla cars do lightly monitor drivers by using a sensor to measure small movements in the steering wheel. If the driver doesn’t have their hands on the wheel, they are repeatedly warned, and eventually the car pulls itself to the side of the road and has to be reset before Autopilot can be turned on again. That capability had to be added months after Autopilot was released in 2015, though, after a rash of drivers posted videos of themselves using the driver assistance feature in reckless ways. Even now, there is evidence that it’s possible to fool the steering wheel sensor.

In contrast, GM’s semi-autonomous system, Super Cruise, watches a driver’s face to make sure they’re paying attention to the road. It also allows hands-free driving.

Broadly, though, the National Transportation Safety Board said last September that the whole industry needs to do better at installing safeguards that help make sure these driver assistance features aren’t misused.

The NTSB’s statements came with the conclusion of the safety board’s investigation into the June 2016 death of Joshua Brown, who was the first person to die while using Autopilot in the United States. (A driver who was killed while using Autopilot in China in January 2016 is now believed to be the first person in the world to have been killed while using a driver assistance feature.) At the time, the safety board specifically recommended that Tesla find ways beyond steering wheel sensors to monitor drivers. The NTSB is currently investigating the most recent Autopilot death, which happened in March in California.

Tesla often points out that the number of accidents involving the use of Autopilot is small compared to the scale and frequency of more typical auto accidents. And Musk recently pledged to regularly release data about the performance of Autopilot, which it will start doing at the end of this financial quarter. But Musk also recently said that Autopilot accidents tend to happen because drivers’ attention can drift — something that might be solved with better driver monitoring.

“When there is a serious accident it is almost always, in fact maybe always, the case that it is an experienced user, and the issue is more one of complacency,” Musk said on a quarterly earnings call earlier this month. “They just get too used to it. That tends to be more of an issue. It’s not a lack of understanding of what Autopilot can do. It’s [drivers] thinking they know more about Autopilot than they do.”